Mack – Post Winter Meetings Observations

Morning.

Some thoughts…

   1.     BVW came out of the box with an excellent beginning of the off season. Prospect lovers may not agree but:

a.     Robinson Cano is am upgrade at 2B

b.     Jeff McNeil is an upgrade at 3B

c.      Edwin Diaz is an upgrade at closer from everyone present and the ghost of Jeurys Familia.

Add Peter Alonso, Amed Rosario, Brandon Nimmo, and Michael Conforto and we now have six of the field positions set for 2019.

   2.     Things were pretty slow going into the end of the last night of the meetings. We all went to bed dreaming of sugar plums and Andrew Miller (no, I didn’t just call him…) and woke up with ‘Family’ back in the fold.

Jeuryrs Familia now joins Diaz as one the best one-two back end bullpen punches in baseball and, added to the already stellar starting rotation.

The great news here is, trade wise, we traded Familia last year for a genuine third base prospect (Will Toffey) and… Familia.

   3.     The Rule V draft brought us four new minor leaguers.

The Mets chose 25-year old flamethrower, RHSP Kyle Dowdy (from Cleveland) in the Rule V draft. He was a 12th round draft pick with the Tigers and was traded mid-season last year to the Indians. Throws in the high 90s but always has been a high ERA/WHIP guy. 3 season total:  3.99/1.33. A Met insider told one of the Mack’s Mets writers that the Mets pitching brain trust think they saw something that can be corrected here and allow them to convert him from an unsuccessful starter to a productive mid-inning reliever.

In the minor league portion of the draft, the Mets have selected outfielder Braxton Lee from the Marlins. He's a 25-year old speedster with basically no power. Best year was 2017 where he hit .309/20-SB in AA. Like Dilson Herrera, a good minor league player to fill an open slot. Going into the draft, the Mets had only three outfielders on their AAA board: Tim Tebow, Keven Kaczmarski, Kevin Taylor

Also in the minor league portion of the draft, the Mets selected 29-year old RHP Chris Mazza from the Marlins. He pitched very well as a starter in 2017 for the AA-Miami affiliate and was then converted to a relieve in 2018 where he went 13-G, 4-starts, for 3-teams, 2-1, 2.55, 1.11. I’m slotting into Syracuse since he finished last season at that level with decent numbers (7-app, 3.94), though he WHIP was a bloated 1.63 (16-IP, 8-BB).

And the last player chosen in the minor league portion was 26-year old C Mitch Ghelfi from the LAAASLV (Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim Soon To Be Las Vegas) chain. His combined A+/AA stats last year were 1520-AB, .237/.289/,341/631, 3-HR, 19-RBI. His last full time season was 2016 (402-AB) so I assume he has become a backup looking forward. That’s fine. We need three catchers per affiliate. For now, I put him on the Binghamton spring training team, battling out with Ali Sanchez, Jose Garcia, and Dan Rizzie. Loser goes back to Lucy.

So… what are my final observations?

1.     On the bright side, we improved at second base (Cano over McNeil), third base, (McNeil added to Frazier), closer (Diaz over the departed Familia) and 8^th inning relief pitcher (Familia over everyone else on the staff. That’s four of the 25 slots available.

2.     On the gloomy side, we left town without a new center fielder, catcher and third relief pitcher.

3.     We lost two of top prospects (Dunn, Kelenic) but we all know that prospects prove nothing until they do it at the major league level. In return, we got back a future HOF second basemen and one of the top five closers in the business.

4.     There is one more ray of hope here. Not many players cut a deal for a new uniform leaving a shite load of free agents available to sign before opening day.

5.     Everyone in baseball said that no one moved faster in the halls than BVW. We seem to have a whirlwind here.